


Length of Days

by galacticproportions



Series: Veterans' Affairs [9]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Aging, Awareness of mortality, Disability, Domesticity, Established Relationship, M/M, Slice of Life, Still doin' it, mentions of suicidal ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-31
Updated: 2016-05-31
Packaged: 2018-07-11 07:28:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7036303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galacticproportions/pseuds/galacticproportions
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They never expected to get old.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Length of Days

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Klyaksa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Klyaksa/gifts).



> If you want, you could read this as a kind of epilogue to "Finishing Each Other's Sentences." I wrote it instead of doing some other things that I kind of need to do, so thanks, Klyaksa, for that.

Every morning that Finn wakes up, before his eyes are even open, he listens for the sound of Poe breathing, and lets out a breath of his own when he hears it. Then he gets up to piss, again. Splashes his face, cleans his teeth--including the three dental implants he had to get a few seasons ago--and heads to the little shared courtyard to water the compound's plants and greet the day.

 

They never expected to get old.

 

Most active-duty pilots during wartime died before 40. Most stormtroopers, if they never moved up the chain of command, were gone by 28. Even after the end of the war, the aftershocks of its violence followed them: not just lingering First Order sympathizers but people whose families or villages had been casualties of Resistance airstrikes, people who didn't trust the ex-stormtrooper representative in the Parliament. Finn survived two assassination attempts in his thirty-six years of service before going to Emeritus status last year. Now he spends only two sessions out of fourteen away from Poe, which is good because the days have returned when every time they're apart, they have to wonder if it'll be the last time.

 

When he thinks this way, Finn tells himself sternly that he shouldn't trouble trouble till it troubles him. They're both in good health, if you discount the bad knees and gaseous digestions and weak bladders and occasional spells of forgetfulness and the difficulty in straightening up from a stoop. One of Rey's former students stops by a couple of times a week to clean the house with her mind and chat in fluent binary with BB-8, who by this time has had every part replaced at least twice, and manage Finn's back pain.

 

But she can't do anything about the stroke that took Poe's ability to fly. "Mild," the medics said, and he can walk and eat and talk and think, but there's a slice of vision out of his right eye and his reflexes are no longer fast enough on that side for him to trust himself with the controls. The day they told him, he raged and cried, he wouldn't accept Finn's comfort, he slept in the hangar for several nights after that. For his entire adult life, when someone needed him, or something happened that he couldn't handle right away, he'd take to the sky; flying was his power and his joy. Now he can only be a passenger, or look up at it like everybody else.

 

Finn can hear him moving about in their room, so he starts a pot of caf and stirs two porridges together. There's some swearing and some ominous pauses, but by the time Poe comes into the kitchen he's smiling, and Finn's heart swells and aches because he knows that the smile is for him, an effort to reassure him that Poe's still happy to be alive and glad to be with Finn and content to be waking up in their apartment together.

 

Finn knows perfectly well that for a while after the stroke, Poe wanted to die, though he never said anything about it. Now, he seems to have decided to stick around as long as he can. He's been helping to develop a shareable protocol based on BB-8's programming; he does most of the cooking; he listens to histories, and to Finn's accounts of parliamentary wrangling and intrigue, and to songs from all the music-making worlds in the galaxy. His ability to play and sing is unimpaired, and he sometimes walks down to the little cantina to do a pick-up concert with whoever's passing through that evening. He can still step in easily; his range is a little smaller, his voice thinner, but still resonant and flexible. He always walks back from those nights with a little extra spring in his step.

 

Finn knows it's not the same.

 

"You sleep okay?"

 

"Yeah, fine." Poe takes the cup and sips. "Thanks, my love." BB-8 burbles around their kneecaps, and the binary sun casts a pinkish light on the clay wall and doorway and the side of Poe's face.

 

Poe's beautiful curls have gone gray and the crinkles around his eyes have deepened into nets that Finn kisses daily. He routinely assures Finn that he's just as handsome, if not more, now that his hair is gone (there's actually still a bit left, but Finn shaves it all, he thinks it looks more purposeful that way) and that the few deep creases in Finn's face make him look distinguished. They sip their caf together. Finn heads for the fresher, since taking a shit requires delicate timing these days.

 

Later Poe goes to eat with the Yavinese family that lives across the compound--they moved here to learn some local tactics for forest restoration, since deforestation is becoming a problem there. Finn ignores some non-urgent work in favor of one of the sappy holonovelas that he's not-so-secretly addicted to. It's the hot part of the day, so maybe he also slightly takes a nap, and when he opens his eyes the credits are rolling and Poe has lifted Finn's feet into his lap and is smiling at him again, this time with an extra curl of mischief and desire. "You wanna go to bed?"

 

It's not like when they were young and lean and limber, hopped up on adrenaline and zeal. It's slower, sometimes clumsier; they can't count on staying hard for any length of time; Finn sometimes feels morose about the bits of him that have sagged or slackened. But their knowledge of each others' bodies, through all the years and changes, is nimble and loving and deep. Finn holds Poe's hands over his head and kisses his throat; Poe rolls Finn over and tongues his asshole with care and devotion. They do what feels good, however they can, as much as they can, while they can.

 

They get up again, creakily, and Poe makes dinner and tells Finn about the teenager in the family across the way--"They're kinda surly to start out with but they're passionate and they've got a good mind, I bet they'd like to talk to you about Parliament stuff even if they'd never say so, you should invite them for a walk or something, or make up a chore to pay them for--" and they have a little smoke to blur the edges of the day. Finn does his prescribed exercises so he won't have to lie to Rey's student when she comes in tomorrow. Poe settles in to listen to a new history of the interbellum period, pausing it every so often to provide color commentary on Finn's ass, which Finn knows is flatter than it used to be, but he'll take it.

 

Finn leaves Poe in the midst of a heated senatorial debate, and pisses again before he goes to bed, even though he knows he'll be up to do it yet again in a few hours. He lies down, but he won't really enter deep sleep until Poe comes in to lie beside him and wrap his arms around him and breathe into the back of his neck, the last thing Finn hears at night and the thing he prays he'll get to hear the next morning.

 


End file.
